2014 Speaker: Nathalie Hager, PhD student, Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies program at the University of British Columbia

Nathalie Hager has B.A. in Art History and an M.A. in Canadian Art History from Carleton University in Ottawa where she taught art history as a contractual educator at the National Gallery of Canada and the former Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. As a Ph.D. student in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies program at the University of British Columbia she examines the controversial proposal to transform the stable and traditional discipline of art history into World Art History, a “new broad discipline” that extends beyond Europe to be both multidisciplinary and global in approach. Her dissertation evaluates and tests emerging theories of world art history in order to develop strategies to incorporate, emphasize, and strengthen transnational connections and propose theoretical and pedagogical frameworks for introductory curricula.

She’ll be giving a talk titled “Introducing ‘WHAM – World History of Art Mashup,” a presentation-ready, rapid prototype of an interactive web interface for desktop screens and smartphones that reorganizes current-existing high-quality resources for art history into a mashup focused on a ‘networks-of-exchange’ approach. By making explicit the connections between diverse world regions in dynamic exchange with one another, WHAM supports world art history’s emphasis on global and transnational linkages as shapers of human history. Initiated to address the lack of suitable pedagogical texts for introductory art history courses that reflect the current state of the discipline and the rise of World Art History approaches, WHAM presents as an alternative to the traditional introductory art history survey text.